


No Peace In Death

by lordcyanides



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Past Abuse, julian's death is like a suicide, mentions of self harming behaviors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-07 04:27:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19201882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordcyanides/pseuds/lordcyanides
Summary: This fanfic was written after a prompt by @vesuviass on Tumblr about Julian not coming back to life after his execution… and a grief-striken, newly resurrected Lucio grieving over his dead body. Written in Lucio’s POV





	No Peace In Death

Call me evil if you want. I will accept the characterization. Is evil something I am, or something I do, I wonder. For all I know, I am a mere human; and humans err. I have taken many bad decisions along the years, and hurt many people, there is no point in denying it to myself anymore. But I swear, I never wanted to hurt him the way I did. Yet… I don’t think I’ve hurt a man more than him.

And now… now he’s gone.

“You are an idiot, Jules. An utter, complete idiot. Not that I was not aware of that. But dying for a crime you did not commit? That is the summit of how far idiocy goes.” I whisper, holding the urge to slap him just in time. There’s no use. Not anymore. My words and my strikes can hurt him no more… no more than they already have and no more than he has himself.

If he could hear me, he’d probably let out one of his signature chuckles, before he agreed with me. Oh, of all people, he wouldn’t pass an opportunity to diminish and insult himself, as if he was getting off on it. I honestly didn’t know one’s self hatred could run so deep that it could become a personality trait before I met this man… and still, I had underestimated him. We all had. 

As he lays in his coffin, I cannot help but observe how beautiful he is, even in death. How beautiful he always was. Porcelain white skin, soft and supple to the touch… Eyes of the purest silver… Magma colored curls cascading down, framing his ascetic face, the sharp jawline and high cheekbones. Sumptuous inviting lips, whose curves could rewrite history. So close, and yet, so out of reach. Frozen into time… forever more. 

It was that beauty that drew me to him initially, before I even known his name… but his strange kindness was what enslaved me to him, in a way that most perceived as…scary. That, and his exquisite addiction to his own suffering. All the people I’ve known despised me -perhaps for a good reason. But not him. He never left my side, not even when I had given him plenty of reasons to. 

Why was he doing this? Was it just a part of his good nature, to always see the good in others that kept him around? His moral compass that dictated that he should never abandon a comrade and a patient of his, even when said comrade made his life a living hell? Or was it that he craved the way I treated him; in anger and lust alike, as a distraction from the hell that resided into his heart -or, better said, the need to be treated as the worthless scum he saw himself. Too bad… because regardless of my actions, I knew that he was the opposite.

“Use me…” he used to implore me. “Take me… hurt me…”But I could hear only one thing. Break me. So I did; again and again; and each time I did the deeper the sadness hidden in his stormy eyes each time he returned to me for more. Why did he return..? What drew him back to me, what fascinated him so about my ways of showing him pain and disgrace..? And what made me break him more and more before putting him back together, only to break him again and again when I wanted more than anything to hold him tight against me, caress his hair and tell him how much he meant to me? Was it selfishness? Arrogance? Jealousy? Yes, that was it. I was jealous. 

No, not jealous of him; his self-sacrificing ways were never something I desired for myself. ‘Twas that magician I was jealous of. That magician who never loved anyone except himself; and he certainly did not love him. He did not deserve his pain, his affection, his love; when it should be mine and mine alone. So I carved my name onto his delicate freckled skin and heart, and he carved his name too; just to get even… just to show me that I was not worthy to have such a rare being as him for myself. Just to deny me his love. 

It was a game played between us, and the poor doctor was caught in between: the only pawn; used by both sides and wounded by both sides, as he was pushed back and forth in our attempt to hurt each other by hurting him. 

We had not calculated how much pain he could take before he broke. We were too oblivious to that, as we were too deeply emerged into our own competition over him. Too oblivious, until it was too late. 

I died. I came back.

He died. Permantly.

He died for my wrongdoings, mine and Asra’s. Though the executioner was the one who pulled the lever, we were the culprits for his death, I see that now. Asra for using his feelings towards him for his own gain. Me, for my erroneous dealings with supernatural entities, a plague that was sourced in me, my stubborness, possessiveness and delight in subduing and humiliating others before me. I loved him; and killed him, because I couldn’t show him how much I loved him otherwise.

The white lillies that surround his body do not suit him. They did not suit him in life, and they do not suit him now. Nor does the emptiness into his eyes, as he gazes into nothing -he was found too late, and they had already dried out; the mortician could not close them… So they remain open; like broken windows to a soul long gone… If it weren’t for them or the vibrant rope burn around his neck, one would perhaps think the doctor’s asleep; there’s a strange calmness settled onto his features; the likes of which I had never seen when he was alive. Though the melancholy on his features is even more prominent than it used to be; and for once, he cannot mask it with his wits or humor. Even in death, the doctor has not found the peace he was so desperately seeking.

“You idiot…” I whisper again, fingers tracing the beloved features of his face; his cheekbones, his jawline, as if trying to memorize them. “How dare you leave me, how dare you die without my permission…” I glance around to make sure nobody’s watching and I lean down to crash my lips onto his, that stil smell of coffee. They’re lifeless, bruised and cold, so cold and so unlike the way they used to be,punctuating the wrongness of this; the unfairness of his death. I kiss him again and again, furiously; as if he’s going to return to life this way. I was fully aware of the hot tears that were running down his cheeks and ruining my makeup, but I could not care less at the moment. “I’m sorry… I am so sorry…”

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to share your opinion on this fanfiction! Let me know if you want me to write more like this.


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